romans. more than 15,000 layoffs at a time when there's no reduction in the amount of student who is need good teachers to compete with the rest of the world. our public school model is k-12, but should be crawl through 12. the earlier we invest in kids the more we save later. shrinking budgets slowed or stopped kindergarten programs. as a result, many 3-year-old and 4-year-olds aren't going to pre-school and they should be. a poor child who hasn't gone to a quality preschool enters kindergarten behind. children of the wealthiest families are at the top. those lines trend down as you go down the economic ladder. what's worse? many never catch up. research shows they need special education services and drop out. science tells us we have to

invest in kids early. the math, local and state levels say kurt, cut, cut. >> a senior associate dean at school of continuing studies, sam is a former new york city schoolteacher. welcome to both of you this morning. >> thank you. >> chris, let's start with politics. how would governor romney improve education for those who can't afford preschools to close the gap? >> i think he would do a couple things. i don't think the issue really is how much money, i think the issue is, is the money being used appropriately? we look at schools, for example in columbia county, florida, where you have 250,000 textbooks published that can't be used because they are not politically correct enough. i think what the governor is going to do is look at this

whole idea. let's keep in mind, the federal government is not an uber state. give this responsibility back to the state, shrink the department of education and focus on those things that are most efficient. education is not a sacred cow. i think, as we keep hearing cut, cut, cut, education is not a sacred cow. that's where we have to start. >> i think that's a good point. i want to be very clear, i don't use the words spend and invest interchangeably. they are not the same word. we know we are spending a lot in education, but how are we making the investments and making sure they pay off? early childhood education is critical. if you invest the right dollar early on, you save later on. >> sam, i know you disagree with chris. president obama has been in office more than three years,

where is the evidence he is improving education in this country? >> i don't know that you can point to it. most parties fail to understand what is essential to transfer what it currently is to what it ought to be in the future. there's precedence for this and the debates are almost history repeating itself. last time we made a major investment in the 1950s and '60s, we became the world leader in education soon after. in the mid-1970s, the college rate of african-americans and whites and hispanics were equivalent. now, we are in a situation where education is not a sacred cow. i can't think of a single institution more vital to short term and long term national security and economic prosper y prosperity. >> do you agree, it should be more of a state focused endeavor

and department of education can be smaller? >> i think what the federal government needs to get out of is compliance and control regulatory approach. one of the challenges of the united states is we have to strike a delegate balance between shared structures to empower people to do their best work and freedom for states to be innovative. it's clearly an essential part. what i would like to see the government do is two things well. ensure equality of opportunity to learn. the reality is, there are very serious economic differences across the state and invest deeply in what we think will be the long term of quality education, the quality of our teachers. >> thanks, gentlemen. a woman's role in the economy. the next guest tells us why women will rock this recovery. why some mothers going back to work doesn't pay.

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with free streaming quotes, news, analysis and even your trade ticket. everything exactly the way you want it, all on one page. transform your investing with the all-new e-trade 360 investing dashboard. how you doing? my name is steve. my family's lived in this neighborhood for years. recently, things got so tight we had to go to our local food bank for help. i lost a lot of sleep worrying about what the neighbors might think. that is, until i saw them there, too. how'd i do, steve? a little stiff. you could have done a little better. what? come on. you know, i have an academy award. yeah, but not for playing me. announcer: play a role in ending hunger. visit feedingamerica.org/hunger and find your local food bank. hundreds of thousands of women are dropping out of the work force. for some, it's a choice, to raise children.

increasingly, it's because they can't afford to work. the cost of two children in child care exceeds median annual rent. add in gas prices and you can see the world through jennifer's eyes. >> reporter: life is the ultimate balancing act for this mother of four. play time, laundry, cooking. she's a full-time social worker turned state-at-home mom. the reason, money. >> right now, i can't afford to work outside my home. >> reporter: they crunched the numbers, day care. $30,000 a year. her full-time job only paid 45 r 45,000, so she quit. to use up the money on day care and lunches didn't make much sense. >> reporter: there's the matter of her $1100 a month student

loan payment, deferred now that she's home with her children. with her husband's salary of $70,000 a year and money she earns from private counseling and blogging, they are getting by cutting back on clothes, toys and food. >> i try not to buy as many snacks as i would. the healthy snacks are outrageously priced. it's got to be budgeted. >> reporter: forget saving for college. the family budget and nerves are strained. >> you worry about the future. >> reporter: for now, she's enjoying watching her children grow up. she misses her social work career. >> you get fulfillment as a mom. it's the best in the world when your kid says i love you or thank you mom. there's a different fulfillment when you are recognized for something among peers or other adults. to contribute to society and

help other people is important. >> women are dropping out of the work force in droves. is 77,000 women left in march through layoffs, dismissals or involunta involuntary -- there's a counter narrative that women are rocking the economic recovery. by the year 2030, the majority of women will outearn their husbands if current trends continue. women have a lower unemployment rate than men. 8.2% overall. rick numan is the chief businessman of world news report. you know her for something called take our daughters to workday. she's the founder of that. welcome to both of you. you wrote an article calls rocking the recovery. what areas are they rocking? >> there's no single narrative that describes women in this economy.

a lot of things are going on. we have heard women are losing jobs under president obama. that is technically true if you slice the data in the way the romney campaign did. it misrepresent what is's happening to women in the work force. bachelor's degrees and other degrees are expected to go up. we know there's a pay gap between men and women. itis been closing. women are in the right fields. they are in the fields that are going to grow. >> health care. >> health care in particular. accounting and more professional fields. that's a good story for women. pay will go up. women are expected to become more of an economic power. >> so, we are going the right direction. >> for some women, we are going the right direction. you know, the average earnings for a woman in 2012 are $36,000 a year. there's a real challenge. >> it's why some of them are dropping out.

they have chosen fields that are going to give them for flexibility. with that comes student loans and less margin for error when college goes up and rent. >> child care continues to be a challenge for way too many children. we haven't had a child care legislation in 40 years in the united states. i think it's why so many of them are starting their own businesses. there's opportunity for flexibility. depending on the business they set up, they can make more money. there's a big attraction to entrepreneurship. women having higher education and being able to rock the economy in terms of growing their own businesses. >> the clo of facebook talked about a woman rocking the recove recovery. she's got a coveted job in corporate america. she's made it a peak of family and career. she leaves work at 5:30 in the

afternoon. she's recently begun to talk about it. listen. >> i get up earlier to make sure they see my e-mails at 5:00. stay up later to make sure they found my e-mails late. i'm more confident in where i am. i'm able to say hey, i am leaving work at 5:30. >> i'm very glad she has the opportunity to do that. i think when you are on top of a company, when you are your own boss, you are close to the boss, those are the kinds of things you can negotiate. i hope cheryl makes that possible for every parent that works at facebook. they can all leave at 5:30, if they want. the challenges, often the opportunities and privileges that come with leadership stay with leaders. >> instead of having a divide between women doing it, men should be doing it. men do leave at 5:30 to go to soccer games. i don't think it's news when they do, but maybe it should be.

>> nice to see both of you. women might be rocking the recove recovery, but if you look at the women's rights movement, it might not be something to celebrate, just yet. susan b. anthony says our job is not to make women grateful, it's to make them ungrateful so they keep going. that's from the hbo documentary "gloria." americans believe they should be in charge ofheir own future. how they'll live tomorrow. for more than 116 years, ameriprise financial has worked for their clients' futures. helping millions of americans retire on their terms. when they want. where they want. doing what they want. ameriprise. the strength of a leader in retirement planning. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you one-to-one.

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we wouldn't be talking about women in this economy, growing their businesses if it hadn't been for leaders of women's rights in the 1970s. gloria steinem joins me now.

welcome to the program. nice to meet you. >> thank you. >> we are watching in a primary season getting under way this war for the women's vote. there was a day when the woman's vote maybe was irrelevant. sudd suddenly, everyone wants to say i'm better for women and the economy for women. when you see this debate happening on the campaign trail, what do you think? >> it's satisfying now that we know the gender gap is huge. i's crucial. it's alarming because one of our two great political parties is anti the rights we gained. >> you are saying the republican party? >> actually, it's not republicans who also don't agree with the party platform. it's the many kaszs former democrats, very extremist right wing folks who have taken over the republican party. no more could nixon get

nominated or goldwater who was pro-choice. it's become very extreme on the issues of women. it's alarming to me. if people get mad at one party, they vote for the other. i'm hoping real republicans will take their party back. >> you believe there's been war on women within the republican party? >> no, there was a brilliant book written called, "the republican war on women" in the '70s. since the right wing started taking over the party, this has been a problem. we can't afford to have one of our two parties so far off to the extreme right. >> you were a supporter of hillary clinton in 2008 and you are this president. do you think he's done enough? >> well, youer of this president. do you think he's done enough? >> nobody's done enough, but i think that it's part of his consciousness. i think he has a good heart and a good mind. but the problem is that if one

party is extreme, it drags the other one along with it. >> one thing that's coming out of this recession is the hierarchy of women. a majority of women will outearn their husbands by 2030, right? that's the one narrative. the other is hundreds of thousands only women are dropping out of the work-force because they can't afford to do everything, gas, rent, student loans. they're on student loans and also pay for child care. so there's this interesting hierarchy within women. >> it's not a hierarchy within woman. we're the only system in democracy without a national system of child care and health care yet and without family-friendly work policies so the parents -- both parents, men and women, of young children can have children and also be in the work force. i mean i think it's dangerous to say it's a hierarchy among women because that seems to say women -- women are not opposed to each

other. we live in a country that behaves as if we don't have children. if there were equal pay, the poverty would be cut in half, $2 billion more circulating in the economy. >> why don't we have equality? as long as i've been in journalism -- >> we've 14 cents. >> don't spend it all in one place, ladies. >> it's because large corporations are using women as a cheap labor force. >> do you think women don't negotiate for themselves the way men do? >> yeah, that's true too. we have to look at -- because we've been trained to be feminine or not as demanding or up for conflict or whatever, you know, we all have to humanize ourselves, but the structure itself is devoted to using women as a cheap labor force. fa and if you look at equity, not just income, it gets much worse. there's much more of a division. but the idea -- i mean men are

parents too. >> right. >> and men also deserve family-friendly work policies. >> what responsibility do you think that generation x women have right now because they're hitting the sweet spot of, you know, fwg most productive at home and at work. right now they're 35 to 45 years and hitting their stride. i'm going to speak for myself and say they're pretty tired. having it all is tiger. what do you have for taking the ball forward? >> get mad. get mad and say, hey, wait a minute, how come we're behind canada and every european country. you know, we're doing something socially useful when we have children. so -- >> there's more work to be done you're saying to be satisfied. >> no. we need to look at policy and stop turning inward and saying it's my fault, why i can't do this and why -- >> right. >> and make some reasonable

policies that exist in every other modern dynasty. >> gloria stein. . nice to meet you. what's a share of investment? apple or spreading your dollars out over six stocks? we'll going to tell you next on "your bottom line." muscle loss with exercise and ensure muscle health. i've got revigor. what's revigor? it's the amino acid metabolite, hmb to help rebuild muscle and strength naturally lost over time. [ female announcer ] ensure muscle health has revigor and protein to help protect, preserve, and promote muscle health. keeps you from getting soft. [ major nutrition ] ensure. nutrition in charge! the chevy cruze eco also offers 42 mpg on the highway. actually, it's cruze e-co, not ec-o. just like e-ither. or ei-ther. or e-conomical. [ chuckling ] or ec-onomical. pa-tato, po-tato, huh? actually, it's to-mato, ta-mato. oh, that's right. [ laughs ]

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with a little help along the way. ♪ td ameritrade. proud sponsor of the 2012 u.s. olympic team. people are making money with money. are you? is it time to buy, sell, or hold stocks? should you be invested right now? in case you missed it, 2012 has been a very good year. the s&p 500 is up more than 10%. apple is a big part of that rise. the big conversation among people in the stock market today, can stocks keep moving up, and if so, what should you buy? let's ask our resident stock market guru matt mccall. if you wait till you feel

comfortable to get in the stock market, you're going to wait forever. >> then i guess you'd call me dumb money. >> we would not call you dumb money or we wouldn't have you here. you think you should be buying stocks. >> you want to ask the question, do you want to invest in the stock market for the future, if your answer is yes, you want to be in stocks now. valuations right now, the stock market is still extremely attractive. granted we've doubled from the lows going back to 2008. we could have a 5% to 10% pullback. if you're investing for the long term, you want to put it in now. if you are in, hold steady. >> if the stock market goes down in the low term, that's good for you. if you're just getting in, you're getting low prices because the goal is to buy low and sell high. >> if you're looking long term, you want to buy on the comebacks. >> my crystal ball never quite manages to time the market perfectly. you like some sectors.

technology, energy, consumer staples. >> this covers everything. oil's going to move higher. i think the problems in iran is going to keep energy high. technology valued very well right now. the nasdaq has had a great 2012. and the consumer staples go on the other end of the spectrum. that's going be proctor & gamble, things with're going to buy regardless of the stocks. >> say you've got play money -- there's no such thing, but you know what i mean. do you buy $600 in apple or spread it out? >> it's a tough, tough question. i own apple for my clients. >> they get a dividend for having the stock. >> i love the stock. i really do. it's tough to fight that. but it's tough to tell the investor out there to put all your money in all stock. yes, spread the rest so you get

a little bit diversified. >> an aggressive investor should have 10% in a fixed income bonds, 10% cash, almost the rest in stocks. a moderate investor you start to have a little less stocks and conservative investor which basically is what i am all the time. >> it depends who you are, how old you are, and even if you're in your 20s and 30s, you probably have to look at moderate conservative so you can sleep at night. >> have a nice weekend. people with money are making money. millions aren't. everything you heard reinforce this american divide. a house in a good school district costs $200,000 more. quality shows us your child need as quality education, but you can't afford it. tell us what you think. back now to "cnn saturday morning" for the latest headlines. have a great weekend. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com